Way back in the day, I used PulseAudio’s network source/sink capability quite a bit; mpd running on my server with Pulse network was fun. I actually ran the Windows build of Pulse in my dual boot at the time so it could have a continuous mpd experience. (Yes I know you could just output to an encoded stream or whatever, but the seamless experience was Really Cool)
I also didn’t really have any issues with Pulse even back then; honestly I kind of liked it. I stopped using desktop Linux well before Pipewire released, though :(
I remember my first distro was Ubuntu 7.04. There was no Pipewire or Pulseaudio, only Alsa. By default it was not possible that two applications could play sound at the same time. It was only possible after some config hacking… I don’t miss those times.
Pipewire still does the volume at 100 thing. This is very funny when I’m on my high quality USB DAC where 100% volume can definitely break my eardrums and possibly also my headphones. I think I may have finally learned via pain to not have my headphones on when plugging them in.
Other than that, it tends to work pretty much all the time as expected.
Yeah I never had problems, ok in the OSS times you needed to set it up just like everything else back then, but I never had serious issues… except with PulseAudio
Exactly. They just work. I’ve only used PulseAudio and Pipewire recently, but both of them just worked. It was maybe 10-15 years ago, when I had troubles with sound on Linux. Or with anything at all, really.
But that’s also true that I’m not trying to build my own OS by using Gentoo or Arch or Linux from Scratch. I’ve been using Manjaro, because it’s not bloated, yet it has everything I need, and it just works.
I have only really used upstream distros (specifically what I've used is debian, open suse, Arch, Gentoo, and nixOS). I've never had audio issues, except when I first started using Gentoo, as I was missing some compile flags.
That being said I only started using Linux 3 years ago.
I tried to solve my audio issue yesterday (im a new linux user)
The audi from hdmi -> monitor is scratchy… most of the time
Guide says uninstall pulse audio. I run the terminal command, cant do that because of popOS desktop requires pulseaudio. Ok. Cant remove popOS desktop either because it will break stuff.
Cant install new audio software either because it conflicts with what i got already…
Found an issue posted on github about it from 2019… “issue closed”
I had this on Ubuntu or Debian awhile back. PopOS shares enough with them this might be the same issue. It was a quick fix that worked for me. If not, then there’s multiple scratchy HDMI issues out there…
I would recommend to switch as well, PopOS isn’t that actively developed at the team, because the team is currently developing its own desktop environment which isn’t out yet. Linux Mint is great for new users (especially from Windows) and supports all major desktop environments. If you don’t have anything against using the command line from time to time, both Debian and Fedora are great options, Debian isn’t corporate-run but Fedora gets faster updates.
This makes me ponder on how old some of those “issues” are. I remember using ESD over OSS and being very happy to finally be able to hear sounds from multiple programs all together instead of having a single program monopolizing the audio output.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.
That being said, even with all its issues, ever since ESD and now pulseaudio, this has been one of the reasons why I prefer to use Linux over anything else. Mostly for RTP streaming nowadays.
In fact, for a while, pipewire didn’t support RTP streams and I kept using pulseaudio just for this reason.
I made a permanent switch to NixOS recently after being on windows forever. Tried PulseAudio for a week and it kept not working. Switched to Pipewire and it’s been perfect.
![[satire] audio systems](https://backend.xylight.dev/api/files/l4rgemtdlgd37rz/1lyxsogupnmttej/audio_4BXagNi8cn.jpg){kind=link}
Add comment